Michael Salgado-Medina spent his freshman year at Arizona riding a secondhand bike, because a car felt like a splurge. He’s 20 now, and he owns a three-bedroom house about four miles from campus — $370,000, two bedrooms rented to teammates, and a plan to lease the whole thing once he graduates. His teammate Matthew Lado, also 20, bought at $335,000, and two teammates’ rent covers his mortgage. Both are still in college. Both have closing documents.
The window is short. The note isn’t.
The 2021 rule change that let college athletes earn from their name, image and likeness pulled the whole timeline forward. Arizona quarterback Noah Fifita, 23 and in his fifth year, made $950,000 last year and will finish school in a renovated four-bedroom house with a pool, about three miles from campus; his father floated the idea. Higher up the market the numbers get serious — Ole Miss quarterback Trinidad Chambliss paid $1.9 million for a townhouse on the Square in Oxford and will clear more than $6 million in college pay this year, and Miami’s Darian Mensah paid $2.35 million in April. Several of these buyers are the first homeowners in their families. “This can change our lives forever,” Fifita said.
What the roommate check doesn’t cover
The advisers in the story don’t agree, which is what makes it useful. Adam Sansiveri, who runs Bernstein Private Wealth Management’s sports and entertainment group, would normally tell an athlete to wait for a first professional contract: the earnings aren’t proven yet, and money inside a house is nowhere near as flexible as money in stocks. Brittany Palma, the Tucson agent who teaches a financial-literacy class to Arizona athletes, pushes them through sample budgets first and won’t put a 20-year-old into debt he can’t carry once football ends. The counterargument is real, too — housing near a flagship university has steady demand, and a primary residence carries tax advantages.
Here’s the line worth keeping. Rent from two teammates covering a mortgage payment isn’t the same as covering a house. Property taxes, insurance, maintenance and the month somebody moves out all sit outside that number, and renting the place after graduation quietly converts a residence into a small business with its own tax and management profile. None of that argues against buying. It argues for running the math on a normal year instead of the best one. Anyone whose income arrives early and may not last — an athlete, a commission earner, a founder after a sale — is welcome to bring one page of numbers to a short review and let somebody else supply the pessimism.